Finally, a Terrific Show for Some of the U.K.’s Best Actors
The central gag of Slough House, the organization, is that the worst spies in London have been thrown together in one building and punished with terrible, useless jobs. When MI5 rookie River Cartwright is sent to Slough House, for example, he’s put to work sorting through garbage he steals from bins. When he asks Jackson Lamb, his boss, what he’s meant to be looking for, Lamb cracks, “The remnants of a once promising career.”
The central gag of Slow Horses, the Apple TV+ series, is the exact opposite. On Slow Horses, some of most accomplished actors in the U.K. are thrown together on one show and rewarded with delightful jobs at which they effortlessly excel. For viewers of a certain age, the show can sometimes resemble a kind of nature preserve for the beloved British actors of our youths. Here the thespians who once thrilled us in subtle, complex roles get to gleefully chew the scenery. There are a lot of reasons to love Slow Horses—its gimcrack plotting, its mix of action and comedy, its willingness to kill characters off—but I love it most because, on it, some of my favorite performers are clearly having the times of their lives. In Season 4, newly premiered on Apple TV+, one more great name gets added to the list.
Chief among the stellar cast is, of course, Gary Oldman, playing Jackson Lamb, head of Slough House. The actor was once the bright young hope of British film, not least because his high spirits made even his most repugnant characters tremendously appealing. The guy was the electrifying lead in Sid and Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears! But Oldman has long settled into a perfectly fine character-actor career. He enlivens roles in billion-dollar franchises; he cashes checks for action movies galore; he occasionally gets to wear a lot of makeup for a plum historical drama like Oppenheimer. In Darkest Hour, he wore so much makeup he won an Oscar! He was great in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but when was the last time he looked like he was having fun onscreen?
Well, he’s having a blast in Slow Horses. Though Oldman gives him a little de rigueur haunted gloom, Lamb is basically a cartoon character, emitting withering insults and noxious gases in equal measure. Each season, he gets to ride to the rescue of his motley crew, because despite his disheveled appearance he’s still a master spy. But until his espionage instincts kick in, Lamb is repulsive, and Oldman loves it. Picking out wedgies, blowing his nose, splattering noodles everywhere: Oldman seems to have been encouraged by the series’ directors (and by Mick Herron’s novels) to find every way imaginable to look like an absolute boor. His stringy hair, permanent stubble, and tatty clothes are so overdone that they’re practically drag, and Lamb isn’t just offensive on an olfactory level—Oldman can’t suppress the twinkle in his eye when Lamb dispenses yet another importune comment. “The next sound you hear will be me expressing confidence,” he lobs at Emma Flyte, the MI5’s attractive new head of security in the Season 4 premiere, right before Lamb rips a particularly juicy fart. He’s prone to the kind of outlandish harassing jokes of the sort that older actors (including, at least once, Oldman himself) love to bemoan that the PC police don’t let us say anymore. Just watch his glee when he responds to Flyte’s suggestion that he could use a shower: “Yeah, that’s a tempting offer, but I don’t think that’s appropriate right now.”
Each season, Oldman gets a scene or two against Kristin Scott Thomas, playing the MI5 muckety-muck Diana Taverner. (In this season’s installment, during the Season 4 finale, Lamb fires off one of his best zingers ever, and Oldman looks barely able to rein in his own laughter.) Thomas was nominated for an Oscar in 1996 for The English Patient, one of innumerable, irresistible 1990s roles as an aristocrat whose icy hauteur is warmed by love (and/or sex). These days Thomas works occasionally—she just directed her first film, which premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival—but she, too, seems to be afflicted by the disorder that seems to afflict many great actors when they get old: They get stuck playing boring roles in boring movies. (That was her, as Winston Churchill’s wife, in Darkest Hour.)
So what a joy it is to see her devouring everyone in her path as MI5’s ruthless Second Desk. Thomas doesn’t even bother trying to deepen the character: Diana Taverner exists to be an ice queen, and then to watch all her plans fall apart at the end. She grudgingly respects Lamb because he’s the only one as good as she is, but Season 4 gives her the perfect new antagonist: a new First Desk (James Callis) who’s obsessed with transparency and accountability. Taverner hates transparency and accountability the way Lamb hates healthy food. In every scene between the heads of MI5, Thomas makes her disdain as clear as glass. I don’t think I’ve seen Thomas have as much fun onscreen since she played Plum Berkeley in Absolutely Fabulous.
Season 4 also gives plenty of screen time to Jonathan Pryce, playing River Cartwright’s grandfather David, aka the “Old Bastard,” a former high-ranking agent now transformed by dementia. The role mostly requires Pryce to gibber and roll his eyes in confusion, but Pryce makes a meal of the moments when the Old Bastard regains just a touch of his old imperiousness. It’s great to see the guy who once played the Engineer in Miss Saigon commanding a scene again, even if briefly. Certainly it’s better than how he’s spent much of the past few decades; his IMDb page is a real wasteland, with lowlights like “Governor Weatherby Swann” in three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and “President of the United States/Zartan” in two G.I. Joes.
Season 4 adds another old lion to the mix, one who was raised in England but made his name in Australia. Hugo Weaving plays this season’s evil mastermind, about whom I’ll say as little as possible—but what a relief it is to see a guy who spent a combined 4,300 hours onscreen playing boring Elrond the Elf get to be a complete asshole again. Frank Harkness isn’t Agent Smith, exactly, but he shares with the Matrix replicant a gruff American delivery, the ability to show up where you least expect him, and total ruthlessness.
Oldman aside, none of these elder Brits (and Brit-adjacents) play the heroes of Slow Horses. The horses themselves are played by terrific younger actors like Jack Lowden (playing River Cartwright), Rosalind Eleazar (Louisa Guy), and Christopher Chung (Roddy Ho). These actors have bright careers ahead of them, and 30 years from now—when the industry has forgotten, as it does with almost all actors over 50, how to make the most of them—I hope they find something like Slow Horses to allow them to cut loose once more.
